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Growth India Telescope
Context:
The GROWTH-India telescope, located at the Indian Astronomical Observatory in Hanle, Ladakh, captured images of the building-sized asteroid during its closest approach to Earth.
Key Highlights:
- The celestial visitor, known as ‘2011 MW1,’ is classified as a Near Earth Asteroid (NEA).
- Diameter: approximately 380 feet.
- It zoomed past our planet at an astonishing speed of 28,946 kilometres per hour.
- Understanding NEAs is essential for planetary defence and unravelling the mysteries of our solar system.
Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen (GROWTH):
- Type: Fully robotic optical research telescope.
- A joint partnership between the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) and the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay).
- Support: DST-SERB, IUSSTF, and IIT Bombay alumni batch of 1994.
- Altitude: 4500 metres above mean sea level.
- The primary research focus is time-domain astronomy, which involves studying explosive transients and variable sources in the universe.
- It has a field of view of 0.7 x 0.7 degrees and a pixel scale of 0.7 arcseconds per pixel.